The 5-Minute Voice Termination Compliance & Trust Scorecard
Is your current (or prospective) US termination provider about to get your numbers flagged, throttled, or blocked?
Since August 2025, the FCC has removed more than 1,300 providers from the Robocall Mitigation Database (RMD) — and every provider in the call path, not just gateway carriers, is now required to block traffic from anyone not listed. If your termination partner has a weak compliance posture, your calls can get caught in the fallout: flagged by downstream analytics, blocked by intermediate carriers, or disconnected outright.
This isn't a legal checklist for carriers — it's a buyer's checklist. Five minutes, ten questions, a score you can act on today.
Own STIR/SHAKEN certificate
Does your provider sign calls with their own SPC token and certificate — not one borrowed from an upstream carrier? (As of September 18, 2025, relying on an upstream's certificate is a compliance violation, not just a bad practice.)
Attestation accuracy
Can your provider explain, in plain terms, when they attest A vs. B vs. C — and do they avoid signing traffic they don't fully know as "A" (over-attestation)?
Current RMD filing
Is your provider currently listed in the FCC's Robocall Mitigation Database, and can they show you the filing on request — not just claim compliance?
Traceback SLA
Does your provider have a contractual (not aspirational) commitment to respond to Industry Traceback Group requests within 24 hours?
Know-your-upstream practices
Does your provider vet the carriers they buy from — or could a single bad upstream partner take your traffic down with them? (This is exactly what triggered the $4.5M Voxbeam forfeiture in 2026.)
Real-time fraud controls
Does your provider apply velocity caps, Do-Not-Originate (DNO) blocking, and geo/destination controls at the SBC layer — before a call completes, not just after?
Clean CLI / no false answer supervision (FAS)
Can your provider guarantee clean caller-ID delivery and no FAS on your routes — critical if you run outbound, collections, or 2FA/notification traffic?
Route quality visibility
Can you see live or recent ASR / ACD / PDD / MOS data per destination — or are you only shown a rate card?
Concentration risk
Is all of your US termination routed through a single upstream? (A second, independently compliant carrier reduces RMD-contagion risk if one path gets flagged.)
Regulatory transparency
Will your provider proactively tell you if something changes — an RMD recertification, a traceback event, an enforcement action nearby in the industry — or would you only find out when calls stop connecting?
Score interpretation
| Score | What it means |
|---|---|
| 16–20 | Strong posture. Your provider is treating compliance as infrastructure, not paperwork. |
| 10–15 | Exposed. You have real gaps that could surface as blocked calls or flagged numbers with no warning. |
| Below 10 | High risk. You are one traceback event away from a disruption you didn't see coming. |
What to fix first
If you scored low on 1, 2, or 3 — that's a legal/regulatory exposure, not just a quality issue. Ask your provider directly for their SPC token status and current RMD listing.
If you scored low on 6, 7, or 8 — that's a route-quality and revenue exposure. Ask for real data, not a rate card.
If you scored low on 5 or 9 — that's a concentration risk. A second, independently compliant route is cheap insurance against a single upstream's bad day becoming your outage.
Ready to verify a route before you commit volume?
This scorecard is for buyer education and is not legal advice. Regulatory details (RMD status, enforcement actions, STIR/SHAKEN requirements) should be verified against current FCC guidance before making compliance representations.